he continues, turning to us, and pointing to the
doorway behind him, "will file in, that way,
and will find two rooms for them, with the
ceilings on the floor, and the trees in their
places. I myself, because my soul is big,
shall live alone in this grand hall. My
bed shall be there in the sheltered corner;
and I shall eat, and drink, and smoke, and
sing, and enjoy myself, with one eye always
on my prisoners, and the other eye always on
my guard outside."

Having delivered this piece of eloquence,
he pointed with his sword to the prisoners'
doorway. We all passed through it quickly,
glad to be out of the sight and hearing of
him.

The two rooms set apart for us,communicated
with each other. The inner one of the two
had a second doorway, leading, as I supposed,
further into the building, but so choked up
by rubbish, as to be impassable, except by
climbing, and that must have been skilful
climbing too. Seeing that this accident cut
off all easy means of approach to the room
from the Pirates' side, we determined,
supposing nobody meddled with us, to establish
the women and children here; and to take
the room nearest to the Pirate Captain and
his guard for ourselves.

The first thing to be done was to clear away
the rubbish in the women's room. The ceiling
was, indeed, as the Pirate Captain had told us,
all on the floor; and the growth of trees, shrubs,
weeds, and flowers, springing up everywhere
among the fragments of stone, was so
prodigious in this part of the Palace, that, but
for the walls with their barbarous sculptures
all round, we should certainly have believed
ourselves to be encamped in the forest, without
a building near us. All the lighter parts of
the rubbish in the women's room we
disposed of, cleverly, by piling it in the doorway
on the Pirates' side, so as to make any
approach from that direction all but impossible,
even by climbing. The heavy blocks
of stone—and it took two men to lift some
of them that were not the heaviest—we
piled up in the middle of the floor. Having
by this means cleared away plenty of
space round the walls, we gathered up all
the litter of young branches, bushes, and
leaves which the Indians had chopped away;
added to them as much as was required of the
underwood still standing; and laid the whole
smooth and even, to make beds. I noticed,
while we were at this work, that the ship's
boy—whose name was Robert—was particularly
helpful and considerate with the children,
when it became necessary to quiet them
and to get them to lie down. He was a
rough boy to look at, and not very sharp; but,
he managed better, and was more naturally
tender-hearted with the little ones than any
of the rest of us. This may seem a small
thing to mention; but Robert's attentive
ways with the children, attached them to
him; and that attachment, as will be
hereafter shown, turned out to be of great benefit
to us, at a very dangerous and very important
time.

Our next piece of work was to clear our
own room. It was close at the side of the
Palace; and a break in the outward wall
looked down over the sheer precipice on
which the building stood. We stopped this
up, breast high, in case of accidents, with the
rubbish on the floor; we then made our beds,
just as we had made the women's beds
already.

A little later, we heard the Pirate Captain
in the hall, which he kept to himself for
his big soul and his little body, giving orders
to the American mate about the guard.
On mustering the Pirates, it turned out
that two of them, who had been wounded
in the fight on the Island, were unfit for
duty. Twenty-eight, therefore, remained.
These, the Pirate Captain divided into
companies of seven, who were to mount guard,
in turn, for a spell of six hours each company;
the relief coming round, as a matter of course,
four times in the twenty-four hours. Of the
guard of seven, two were stationed under the
portico; one was placed as a look-out, on the
top landing of the great flight of steps; and
two were appointed to patrol the ground
below, in front of the Palace. This left only
two men to watch the three remaining sides
of the building. So far as any risks of attack
were concerned, the precipices at the back and
sides of the Palace were a sufficient defence
for it, if a good watch was kept on the weak
side. But what the Pirate Captain dreaded
was the chance of our escaping; and he would
not trust the precipices to keep us, knowing
we had sailors in our company, and suspecting
that they might hit on some substitute
for ropes, and lower themselves and their
fellow-prisoners down from the back or the
sides of the Palace, in the dark. Accordingly,
the Pirate Captain settled it that two men out
of each company should do double duty, after
nightfall: the choice of them to be decided
by casting dice. This gave four men to patrol
round the sides and the back of the building:
a sufficient number to keep a bright look-out.
The Pirates murmured a little at the prospect
of double duty; but, there was no remedy for
it. The Indians, having a superstitious
horror of remaining in the ruined city after
dark, had bargained to be allowed to go back
to their village, every afternoon. And, as
for the Sambos, the Pirate Captain knew them
better than the English had known them at
Silver-Store, and would have nothing to do
with them in any matter of importance.

The setting of the watch was completed
without much delay. If any of us had felt
the slightest hope of escaping, up to this time,
the position of our prison and the number of
sentinels appointed to guard it, would have
been more than enough to extinguish that
hope for ever.

An hour before sunset, the Indians—whose